How Chris Hughes Helped Launch Facebook and the Barack Obama Campaign

By: Ellen McGirtTue Mar 17, 2009 at 5:00 PM

The untold story of how Chris Hughes, today only 25 years old, helped create two of the most successful startups in modern history, Facebook and the Barack Obama campaign.

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Hughes, on the streets of New York's Soho | Photograph by Peter Yang

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Hughes was increasingly anxious, though, that the MyBO platform wasn't robust enough to be truly effective. "I had a development list with hundreds of items on it," he says. "Every morning, we had a 9:30 call where I'd be asking, 'Where is this? Where is this? Why is a project that should take 10 hours ending up three weeks late?' " The campaign had licensed software that Rospars's firm, Blue State Digital, had developed for the Democratic National Committee in the run-up to the midterm elections. It was state of the art for politics, Hughes says, "but not as good as things that people had gotten used to on Facebook and elsewhere. And the tools were untested. They had built them without them being used. That's not how I would ever build software." Acknowledges Jascha Franklin-Hodge, Blue State's cofounder and chief technologist: "We had a base of tools, but we had just started to think about scaling the system."

Hughes admits he was spoiled. "The biggest thing for me was going from a place like Facebook, with fantastic developers and great software, to a place where I couldn't make things happen," he says. He kept asking for more resources. "I thought bringing more developers in-house would make sense, help make things go faster." Rospars, who had taken a leave from Blue State, was in a tight spot. While the campaign org chart put new media at a management level, MyBO was only one of its activities: The online operation was part film studio, part media outlet, part design shop, part analytical geek squad. There were many mouths to feed.

By late summer, Hughes's development list was still some 200 items long -- including a phone-bank tool and a redesigned training page -- and tension was building between him and Rospars. "It was a simple resource question," says Rospars. Hughes went to deputy campaign manager Steve Hildebrand for counsel. "I know I ruffled feathers," Hughes says, but he realized "there was no way I could walk into David Plouffe's office and say I'd need 10 people. He'd say, 'What for?' And I'd say, 'To create a national grassroots infrastructure of peers.' And he'd say, 'How is that going to help us win Iowa?' "

"All of our staff in Chicago was working toward the early states," Rospars says. "Chris was the canary in the coal mine."

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In November, a few weeks before the Iowa caucus, Hughes ran into Obama in the lobby of the Des Moines hotel where the campaign staff was staying. Hughes took the moment to update the candidate on what Iowa supporters were doing for the cause online. Hughes was reaching out to volunteers on MyBO and other social networks, as well as meeting folks in person. "People in Iowa needed constant information about how and where to caucus," he recalls. It was customer service at lightning speed.

Obama's triumph in Iowa on January 3, 2008, did everything Plouffe & Co. had hoped for. "It was a real flashpoint for the campaign," says Hughes. "We could see that our organization was strong and that the message was resonating with people." Then five days later came the loss to Clinton in New Hampshire. The prospect of a long nationwide primary season loomed. "All of a sudden, it made a difference that we have 60 really organized groups in Kansas, a caucus state. And a hugely active Boise for Obama group," Hughes recalls.

"That's when a bunch of people really got what Chris and his group were trying to do," Rospars recalls. "When we lost New Hampshire, we needed every leg we could stand on. The community turned out to be that leg."

Campaign staffers dispatched around the country discovered what the MyBO community had accomplished. When Jeremy Bird, the official state director, parachuted into Maryland to prep for the Potomac primary on February 12, he was astonished to find a whole field operation at work. "They had the entire thing set up -- an office with seven computers, phone lines, a state structure, county chairs, and meetings every other Saturday. They had even picked their own state director." Obama won with 57.4% of the vote.

Obama also took Virginia that day. "We couldn't have done this without the MyBO site," says Marcia Carlyn, co-administrator of the Loudoun County for Obama group. "When we first asked the campaign for resources, they said forget it. Everything was going to Iowa." Hughes's MyBO team filled the breach, with training, talking points, logos and images for flyers, and help organizing events. "We're a noncollege town," says Carlyn. "We're older, conservative, and professional," uncomfortable with knocking on doors and waving banners. "We learned from other volunteers how to do postcard-writing campaigns; we even adopted a city in Pennsylvania and traveled to canvass there." By the time a staffer showed up only a few days before the primary, the Loudoun County group had grown from 5 members to 2,600. "Loudoun County went for Obama twice," Carlyn says proudly.

From Issue 134 | April 2009

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Recent Comments | 43 Total

March 18, 2009 at 8:47am by Neil Jensen

Thanks for the mention, Ellen! And especially thanks to Chris Hughes, who displayed an admirable humility throughout the campaign, and helped set the tone for the entire MyBO "community."

How Chris Hughes Helped Launch Facebook and the Barack Obama Campaign

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Recent Comments | 43 Total

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